


and i think it's gonna be a long long time

by smallblueandloud



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Deaf Clint Barton, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Multi, Seriously read at your own risk, also the character deaths are offscreen but it's post infinity war so you know what they are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 05:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14710259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallblueandloud/pseuds/smallblueandloud
Summary: Natasha doesn’t realize what has happened to her family until one of her partners shows up in a quinjet wearing the gear codenamed RONIN.





	and i think it's gonna be a long long time

**Author's Note:**

> come talk at smallblueandloud on tumblr!
> 
> (i think the fact that the draft was titled 'post infinity war crying' is relevant information)

Natasha finds all the survivors drinking in a bar.

 

She’d been trying to contact Hill for an hour before conceding defeat and tracking everybody down to the nearest place that served whiskey.

 

Rhodey and some Wakandan soldiers are passing around a bottle of what looked like scotch. She can see Steve sitting alone in the back, drinking something that is glowing some kind of light blue and turning a match over and over in his fingers.

 

She decides not to ask. It’s been a hard day for everyone.

 

_ Right. A hard day _ , she thinks sardonically, smiling barely at Thor across from her as she sits down at the bar. She’s been dealing with hard things her entire life. Killing your sisters with your bare hands was certainly not a walk in the park, despite (or maybe because) how much her handlers had tried to make it so. Today, though? Today’s battle against Thanos was definitely the hardest of her life. Watching those people - her  _ teammates _ \- fade to dust in front of her - it was just -

 

Hill was probably the latest in a long list of casualties. It had only been Natasha’s ingrained instinct to contact a handler that had rendered her able to remember Hill’s name. Remembering any contacts besides those in front of her would take energy she doesn’t think she has.

 

Natasha’s still trying to deal with the fact that she was unable to do  _ anything _ to help her teammates. Days like this, when they’re fighting the major fights, remind her that although she may be one of the best humanity has to offer, there’s definitely better than humanity. Her brain keeps replaying the moment when Thanos flicked her to the side like she was no more of an annoyance than a pesky fly. She shakes her head and tries to ignore it.

 

As she flags down the robot that’s been delivering more of the good stuff to Rhodey and his new friends, the Wakandan warrior sitting next to her looks up. She looks exhausted, but then again, probably everyone does.

 

“Any luck?” she asks, although she probably has no idea who Natasha is. She shakes her head anyway, accepting the vodka that the robot places in front of her. It bites like the cold of her homeland on its way down, which is comforting in its own way.

 

“My contact probably got unlucky,” she says, clearing her throat slightly and pushing the glass away from her.

 

The woman grimaces in sympathy. “The American phone networks could be down.”

 

Natasha hadn’t thought of that. She’s evidently too tired to even reason that out.

 

“You should get some sleep,” the woman next to her says, unaware that she’d just voiced Natasha’s inner inner thoughts. “Your team did some of the heaviest fighting.”

 

“I will, thank you,” says Natasha, standing up. Her various wounds are starting to really throb, and she has to get to a bed before she really crashes.

 

Later, she won’t be able to recall how she got to the quarters that she woke up in twelve hours later. She’d slept like the dead, with no nightmares to disturb her at all. That combined with the softness of the mattress and the sunlight streaming in through the window has her turning, half asleep, to reach for the nonexistent other bodies on the bed.

 

When her hands meet nothing, she remembers where she is, and then jolts into awareness a few seconds later, panic running through her veins. She hadn’t even thought to contact Clint or Laura - or even spare an ounce of worry about them - the previous day.

 

Natasha feels guilt crushing her for a second, before she reminds herself that after the trauma of the previous day, it was a miracle that she’d even thought to try to contact Hill. In her exhaustion, her Red Room-bred instincts had reasserted themselves, and she couldn’t exactly do anything to fix that.

 

Taking a deep breath, she stands and checks the lock on the door before taking a long, hot shower, replacing her bandages, and changing into the clean clothes that had been left outside her door. There is no way to contact either of her spouses, or any of her children, for that matter, and worrying about them will only make her less functional. Half of the entire universe had been wiped out, which probably left thousands, if not millions, of positions with no one to fill them. She needs to be at her best.

 

Walking out into the halls of the palace gives her a distinct sense of melancholy. The hallways seem empty enough that she thinks there might be more than half the population missing, although when she thinks about it, she concludes that the last time she’d been in here, they’d been preparing for war.

 

As she passes a hallway, Steve falls into step with her. He has deep bags under his eyes, and probably didn’t sleep a wink the night before, but he’s up and walking, which is all anyone can really ask for. She keeps her eyes on the floor, not trusting her voice. They’ve both lost before, but never like this. Steve was only just getting back the best friend that he’d been missing for years, and Natasha -

 

Natasha’s immediate family has six people in it.

 

She refuses to think about what statistics will end up taking from her.

 

As they come to the lab where Shuri worked on Vision, they spot Bruce, curled up with his head on a table that seems like it was hastily cleared of important inventions. There’s no sign of anyone else, but there’s no ash anywhere in the lab, which Natasha counts as success.

 

She walks over to Bruce to try and move him to somewhere more comfortable, but Steve holds up a hand.

 

“What’s that?”

 

“Where?” asks Natasha. She’s been working with Steve long enough to trust his instincts and senses more than her own. If he says he hears something, she’s not going to doubt him.

 

Steve puts his fingers to his lips and walks to where a device is flashing, facing the wall, and beeping quietly. Natasha doubts anyone normal would have ever heard it, despite the eerie quiet that permeates the palace.

 

He picks it up and brings it over. It appears to be warning of something, although Natasha can’t read the characters on the screen. She only has time to recognize them as the language commonly spoken in Wakanda before it scans her and Steve and immediately translates everything into English.

 

“There’s a quinjet approaching,” notes Steve, quietly, fingers flying over the display. His voice is flat and gravelly, as if he’d spent the last thirteen hours screaming. Or crying. Natasha decides not to push him on it.

 

Suddenly, the device’s speakers crackle to life, sending Bruce crashing out of his precarious position. The message is staticy for sure, but Natasha has spent  _ way _ too much of her life identifying that voice over patchy comms and five time zones. She has no doubts as to who’s approaching their position.

 

Steve notices the hitch in her breathing and turns to her, a ghost of a smile on his face. “Clint’s on his way, then?”

 

“I’d assume so,” says Natasha, trying in vain to keep herself seeming composed. Then blames her difficulties on the events of the previous week and lets a grin unfold. “I suppose we should warn the royal family?”

 

“Or what’s left of them,” says Steve darkly, turning to stare at Bruce, who’s struggling out of his rumpled heap on the ground and glancing up at them.

 

“Did I hear you say Clint’s coming?” he asks, running his hand through his hair and messing it up more. Natasha’s grin gets wider.

 

Tracking down Shuri, now the only remaining member of the royal family, and the head of the Dora Milaje, takes them a while, even though Bruce figures out how to use the technology fairly quickly and Natasha is a literal spy. They’re out on the landing pad by the time Clint gets there, though, and as he lands Natasha tries her best to compartmentalize. Clint is fine, yes, but that doesn’t mean anything about their family or anyone else. He’s always been relatively lucky, anyway, and -

 

_ And it doesn’t matter right now _ , Natasha’s mind whispers, as the ramp lowers and she sees Clint standing there. The others have stepped back to give them space, she registers distantly, and then ignores it. Her heart feels full and she wants to run up to him, reassure herself that he’s alright, but she forces herself to stay in place and catalogue his appearance.

 

He’s got a quiver on his back and a bow in his right hand. His legs are covered by some kind of black and gold design, though, and she squints to try to figure out what they are -

 

She realizes where she’s seen them before quickly. That design is a part of the gear designed for him long, long ago - before the Raft, before the Sokovia Accords, before even Loki. He would have to had break into a maximum security, Avengers-proof facility to get it. Something seems off.

 

Then it hits her. A costume change means that he’s hiding his identity. That means that he’s breaking his house arrest, and the Accords, to be here with them.

 

And he would never, especially not after people started dissolving into ash, leave their family alone to break the law and rejoin his team.

 

Clint reaches her just as her conclusion hits. She reaches towards him and hugs him tighter than she ever has before.

 

_ Cooper. Lila. Nathaniel. Laura. _

 

All of them had, presumably, died with Thanos’ snap.

 

A glance at Clint’s face confirms it, especially after he looks into her eyes and nods. She sags against him, feeling all of her strength leave her at once.

 

_ Laura is dead _ . Natasha would never see her again, never smell her shampoo again, never feel the softness of her lips again.

 

Thanos had killed her, and their children, with stark impersonality, the same way he killed millions of others across the galaxy. Beings with loved ones left behind, jobs to finish, lives to live.

 

Clint finally pulls back, and close up, Natasha can see the redness in his eyes. She brings her hands to in front of her and signs,  _ Do you know what happened? _

 

_ I know enough, _ Clint signs back. He pauses and stares at her, his face full of sadness.  _ I forgive you _ .

 

_ Good, _ signs Natasha, making her motions short and clipped to convey how  _ angry _ she is.  _ Let’s make that bastard pay. _


End file.
